Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Groovin’ Griot is a podcast about how we use dance to tell stories. The term “griot” comes from the West African tradition of oral and embodied storytelling. Griots are traveling poets, musicians, genealogists, and historians who preserve and tell stories via a variety of modalities.
On Groovin’ Griot, we are centering the African Diaspora, honoring the legacies of the griot by talking to the storytellers in our communities who help us understand the role of dance in remembering and reimagining the lessons embedded in these stories. We’ll talk roots, rhythm, rituals, recommendations, and much more.
Episodes released bi-weekly. Email us at groovingriot@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram @groovingriot!
Welcome to Groovin' Griot, a podcast about how we use dance to tell stories. I'm OreOluwa Badaki, a postdoctoral fellow with the Media and Social Change Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Azsaneé:And I'm Azsaneé Truss, a doctoral candidate in the Annenberg School For Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. We're excited to have you groove with us.
Azsaneé:To give you a little background about us and how the series came to be, Groovin' Griot is really grounded in the work that Ore and I do as researchers. I study how multimodal forms structure more liberatory knowledge production processes.
OreOluwa:And my work focuses on how power moves through bodies and spaces within food and land systems. Azsaneé and I are also both dancers, and we think a lot about how movement informs the research, teaching, writing, and community building that we do.
Azsaneé:Definitely. And this podcast is a space where we're exploring some of those connections in a way that speaks more directly to the multimodal methods we use in our research and to who we are as people and as friends. At our core, I think we're both storytellers interested in doing work that can convey the depth of our experiences and the experiences of those we're in community with.
OreOluwa:Which brings us back to the title of our podcast. The term griot in Groovin' Griot comes from the West African tradition of oral and embodied storytelling. Griots are traveling poets, musicians, genealogists, and historians who preserve and tell stories via a variety of modalities. On Groovin' Griot, we are centering the West African Diaspora, honoring the legacy of the griot by talking to the storytellers in our communities who help us understand the role of dance in remembering and reimagining the lessons embedded in these stories.
Azsaneé:Groovin' Griot is also a continuation of the CAMRA Archives, Black Women in Motion podcast. While we were both at Penn, we began the CAMRA Archives podcast where
Azsaneé:we explored movement and embodiment as methodology and pedagogy in Black women's institutional and organizational leadership, research, and person practices. We took some time to really nurture that idea, and now Groovin Griot' picks up where the CAMRA Archives left off.
Azsaneé:Here are a couple of interview highlights from the CAMRA Archives podcast. You'll hear the voices of professors Deb Thomas, Jasmine Johnson, and Christina Knight.
Deb Thomas:There's a certain kind of, anticipatory knowledge that I think registers in the body very differently from how it registers in the mind, perhaps. Like, I think about how, how my body anticipates a fall or anticipates someone else coming toward me or an you know, like, the ways that having been trained in the body for so long in certain kinds of ways, it actually knows things before, you know, my conscious mind knows . It's sort of one of the things, you were saying, Ore, earlier, like the ways that the body knows differently in some ways because it can anticipate differently. I think, and it can read a surrounding from more than one angle, you know, because we're feeling things from more than one angle in our bodies.
Jasmine Johnson:You know, I don't think that the kind of grammar of the body approximates the kind of verbal language that we have for it. I think that the body spills over. I think that there's so many ways of being that actually can't be approximated through language. And, you know, that the oral word is always trying to catch up.
Christina Knight:And so, I guess, one of the ways of answering your question is that, and this is kinda magical, that there are forms that come out of the diaspora that hold memory and tradition, and tapping into them opens you up to other ways of knowing.
OreOluwa:On each episode of Groovin' Griot this season, we'll talk with folks who dig deep into the history of African diasporic dance and storytelling practices, and who bring new dimensions to how we understand the role of these practices in our contemporary reality. We'll talk roots, rhythm, rituals, recommendations, and much more. You won't wanna miss it.
Azsaneé:As the series develops, we'll be looking to hear more from you. Give us some feedback and let us know what you'd like to learn more about by emailing us at groovingriotgmail.com. That's g-r-o-o-v-i-n- g-r-i-o-t@gmail.com. We're looking forward to the conversations we'll have making this podcast.
Azsaneé:Groovin' Griot is a production of the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. This trailer was produced and edited by me, Azsaneé Truss, and my co- host, Ore Badaki. Our theme music is Unrest by ELPHNT and can be found on Directory. Audio.
OreOluwa:As Azsaneé mentioned, you can email us at groovingriot @gmail.com. Our website is groovingriot.transistor.fm, and you'll be able to listen to episodes of this podcast wherever podcasts are found. Come groove with us.